Being a
collector of disc and cylinders that are more than 100 years old, I know that
these recordings are fantastic to find and listen to, yet not that exceedingly
uncommon. I have found them and other
collectors I know will come across them from time to time. The big advantage
that the cylinder player had was always its ability to record as well as play
back sound. I am surprised that more of these recordings don’t surface because it
is FUN to record and play back your own recordings. At least it used to be.
As a child,
I have early memories of a Webcor reel to reel machine that the family owned
and we would bring out from time to time during festive gatherings. I would find time alone or with friends or
siblings to record TV shows, our voices talking or acting or even my aunt
snoring. It was great fun to do. Before this, folks used home record making
machines or wire recorders to capture local sounds. I am a BIG fan of these obsolete media formats and find myself
now doing transfers for people around the country. I have heard hundreds of these personal recordings at this point
of everything from babies cooing to confessions of love to families whooping it
up at a gathering. TOO MANY to remember! When I get feedback from those who I
have done these transfers for, hearing the recordings of dead family members
will often bring tears to the eyes of those who knew them and astonishment from
those who did not. There have been some
excellent compilations of these personal recordings and they seem to be a
growing area of interest. Some academic
institutions have created spoken word archives of people and events for
posterity. Who better to convey history
than those who lived it?

I wondered
two things recently; Where are MY old recordings and is anyone doing this
anymore? From a short informal poll,
the answer to the latter question seems to be not that much. The magic of an
instant recording and playback seems to lose its appeal in the digital format.
Perhaps THE MACHINE has something to do with it? Then began the search for the answer to the former question. I
have begun DIGGING in my own personal archives for my own lost sounds. I still
have many of the reels from the machine I mentioned earlier and transferring
them is a project I have yet to tackle.

Here is one snippet from one of my
first band rehearsals. Let’s call the song “Stairway to Nowhere" (MP3)...

I KNOW I
have other recordings buried and will find them. It seems the longer you wait
to hear them, the more precious they are. Meaningful to ONLY a few.
I asked
WFMU staff if they had any archival recordings to share.

Henry
Lowengard writes…"I
was a big home taper in the late 60s / early 70s: making radio plays (heavily
influenced by the Firesign Theatre) and taping temporary oscillators made out
of Radio Shack parts. Some have made it to digital format, or at least K7. They
are mostly up in my attic with my old Sony open reel deck. Here's a new year's
snippet (MP3) taped off the radio.

I
also was perhaps the first person to play Edison Voicewriter dictation disks on
the air at WBAI... I found the device in a Salvation Army - originally it was
from Hunter College or CUNY I think. I also have a demo disk from the late 50s ( I think) of my great grandmother
at some charity affair at a Connecticut community theatre house. Just a minute
or two.”

Robin
Edgerton writes…
“i
have a cassette somewhere of my sister and I singing "The Unicorn Song"
...i think i'm about 4 or 5 and my sis is about 8. It was converted to cassette
at some point from reel-to-reel. We didn't have a cassette player when i was
lil'.”
not
digitized.

Get
on it Robin!
Diane
Kamikaze wrote…
“I
am pretty sure I still have a cassette of me trying to sound like a wailing
trumpet to one of my dad's jazz records probably when I was 8 or 9. Which was,
uh, about 20 years ago, I guess... I do have cassettes of my grandfather's
voice which I've kept over the years, thanks for the reminder - should digitize
that one!”

YES,
you should.
Irene
Trudel wrote…“While
rearranging my cassettes recently (an archiving project waiting to happen!) I
came across a recording my parents made of my high school marching band playing
the theme from Hogan's Heroes. Of course, the cassette shell fell apart in my
hands. I hope I can make it play again. It's pretty bad.”

Get on it
Irene!
Dave the
Spazz wrote…
“Here's
a record I made when in London in 1974 at Battersea Park. It was one of those
record-a-record booths and as far as I can tell it's the last time I ever sang
on key (I was 12 and my voice hadn't changed yet). It ends with my older
brother making a reference to a particularly stupid episode of Adam-12.”

And
at least one staffer continues to do this. Perhaps it is a function of
children!

Comments

I've been bummed out for years because I cannot find the old tapes I used to make as a pizza delivery driver... I'd get so bored I'd make these nonsensical songs and whatever else... the prize (to me) being a song improvised over an instrumental playing on NPR called "3000 things in my stomach" and another, untitled about just how white I am...

Somewhere in the recesses of my room at my parents' house, there may lie buried a cassette tape I made, sometime during high school, of a fake radio ad for a record of "The Elephant Man's Greatest Hits." Basically me doing the fake announcer voice intro'ing segments of a bad John-Hurt-as-John-Merrick imitation singing the classics. With this record, said the announcer, if you ordered within 24 hours, you also got "Lou Ferrigno's Greatest Hits," from which I sang, in the manner of a deaf person, Lou covering "Summer of '69." (My high school years encompassed the Bryan Adams lumberjack shirt craze.)

Also on that tape — and this will be bloody obscure to anyone not familiar with 1980s NYC politics — was an ad I did for the "Donald Manes Home Aztec Sacrifice Kit." Yeah, you can scroll to the end of the Wiki for that explanation, I'll just back away now.

All I can say is I was one incredibly tasteless, but strangely well-informed, teenager.

When I was a kid all my friends and I loved to make up our own TV show takeoffs using a tape recorder. My older brother taught me how to use the machine: his favorite was to burp into the microphone and then enjoy listening to the playback.

I also taped my parakeets chirping - they chirped like crazy listening to themselves on the tape.

I posted this bit a few years ago:
http://blogfiles.wfmu.org/FJ/age11.mp3
it's me doing vulgar comedy routines and reading heavy metal lyrics pronouncing fetish "feetish". My friends and I were also obsessed with Malcolm Jamal Warner for some reason- we would leave random messages on people's answering machines about how MJW controls their lives...there is a bit of that on here as well.

On the same tape I have some early tape cut-ups using the pause button on my boom box- I should get around to digitizing it because the tape (a low quality radio-shack data cassette) is rapidly deteriorating.

yea webcors and old tape recorders any thing that goes back 20/to 40 years is ripe for transfer..hurry up and transfer that stuff to digital before the poles shift and all your tapes will only play backwards..all kidding aside..i find early home recordings to be facinating..trust me theres A sneaky group of people looking for this kinda audio aroitica..ah the shy voice's one hears..

Yep..having over a thousand cassette tapes..who has time to listen to even a fraction of them if even that..and most of them party tapes and interviews //bands//shows/but it seems the most feeble format man has come up with is cyber-space/digital..one power outage..and bingo..there go's all yer shit..hey my 78's will still play with out juce..just wind up the old victrola...cant waite to hear a 75 year old c.d...shit cant wait to hear a 100 year old i-pod..lol..dumping shit to digital is doom..one geo-magnetic storm and poof! ists all gone.

In the 1940's I grew up using a home record recorder to record many of our family"s talent on piano and singing. We used to cut records and then play them back. I am looking for a way to hear these records(probably made out of tin). Any suggestions/? Please contact carolea1129@aol.com. Thanks Carole